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Category: physics – Page 305

Several firms are working on training environments like Star Trek’s Holodeck, but for machines.

When future robots enter the world, they won’t have a learning curve.

Artificial intelligence researchers are creating tools to help teach the robots that will assemble our gadgets in factories, or do chores around our home, before they ever step (or roll) into the real world. These simulators, most recently announced by Nvidia as a project called Isaac’s Lab but also pioneered by Alphabet’s DeepMind and Elon Musk’s OpenAI, are 3D spaces that have physics just like reality, with virtual objects that act the same way as their physical counterparts.

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N” Scientists have for a third time detected ripples in space from black holes that crashed together billions of light years from Earth, a discovery that confirms a new technique for observing cataclysmic events in the universe, research published on Thursday shows.

Such vibrations, known as gravitational waves, were predicted by Albert Einstein more than 100 years ago and were detected for the first time in September 2015. They are triggered by massive celestial objects that crash and merge, setting off ripples through space and across time.

The latest detection occurred on Jan. 4, 2017. Twin lasers in Louisiana and Washington picked up the faint vibrations of two black holes that were 20 and 30 times more massive than the sun, respectively, before they spiraled toward each other and merged into a larger black hole.

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According to a mind-bending new theory, a black hole could actually be a tunnel between universes, meaning our universe may be nested inside a black hole that is part of a larger universe. The theory explains that the matter doesn’t collapse into a single point, but rather gushes out a “white hole” at the other end of the black one.

The theory was published in the journal Physics Letters B, by Indiana University physicist Nikodem Poplawski. In his article, he presents new mathematical models of the spiraling motion of matter falling into the black hole. His equations suggest that wormholes are probable alternatives to the “space-time singularities” originally predicted by Albert Einstein.

Einstein’s equations for general relativity suggest singularities are created whenever matter in a given region gets too dense as would happen at the center of a black hole. Singularities are infinitely dense and hot, and take up no space. This idea has been supported by indirect evidence but has never been fully accepted into the scientific community.

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Researchers have proposed a method for detecting exotic events in physics by looking for the scars they leave behind on the fabric of space.

By identifying how objects like cosmic strings or evaporating black holes leave behind memories of their existence on the Universe, it might be possible to move some rather strange phenomena from theoretical to empirical science.

It all comes down to an effect of general relativity called gravitational-wave memory, which is the distortion left behind as space is stretched and relaxed by a massive object.

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Scientists have discovered a low-cost, efficient catalyst for splitting water to create hydrogen. This means that the world’s cleanest form of energy, hydrogen, may be more easily and cheaply produced.

Physicists at the University of Houston have discovered a low-cost, efficient, and easily available catalyst that can split water into hydrogen and oxygen. The catalyst is far more efficient than other options that have previously been employed, and because it is grown from ferrous metaphosphate on a conductive nickel foam platform, it is both more durable and cheaper to produce.

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For the first time, scientists have detected evidence of a magnetic field that’s associated with the vast intergalactic ‘bridge’ that links our two nearest galactic neighbours.

Known as the Magellanic Bridge, the bridge is a huge stream of neutral gas that stretches some 75,000 light-years between our two neighbouring galaxies, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds (LMC and SMC). Although researchers had predicted it was there, this is the first observation of its magnetic field, and it could help us understand how these vast bridges come to be.

“There were hints that this magnetic field might exist, but no one had observed it until now,” said lead researcher, Jane Kaczmarek from the University of Sydney.

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A few months ago, physicist Harold White shocked the aeronautics industry when he announced that his team at NASA was in the process of developing a faster-than-light warp drive. His design could one day transport a spacecraft to the nearest star in a matter of weeks.

The idea originally came to White while he was considering an equation formulated by physicist Miguel Alcubierre in his 1994 paper titled, “The Warp Drive: Hyper-Fast Travel Within General Relativity. Alcubierre suggested a mechanism by which space-time could be “warped” and behind a spacecraft.

Michio Kaku dubbed Alcubierre’s theory a “passport to the universe,” which harnesses a quirk in the “cosmological code” that allows for the expansion and contraction of space-time. If proven true, it could allow for hyper-fast travel between interstellar destinations. In order to accomplish this, the starship would need able to expand the space behind it rapidly to push it forward. For passengers, it would look like a lack of acceleration.

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Aubrey de Grey in this new interview with Vox.

We all grow old. We all die.

For Aubrey de Grey, a biogerontologist and chief science officer of the SENS Research Foundation, accepting these truths is, well, not good enough. He decided in his late twenties (he’s currently 54) that he “wanted to make a difference to humanity” and that battling age was the best way to do it. His life’s work is now a struggle against physics and biology, the twin collaborators in bodily decay.

“I understand it takes a certain amount of guts to aim high.” —Aubrey de Grey.

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